Bell Atlantic Seeks Entry to Cable TV : Communications: The company’s petition for a federal waiver of restrictions is the most sweeping to date.

In an aggressive bid to enter the cable TV business, Bell Atlantic Corp. is asking the Justice Department to drop restrictions prohibiting it from offering nationwide video entertainment services.

Although other Bell telephone companies have made similar pleas, the Bell Atlantic petition is the most sweeping. The filing seeks to end a provision of the 1984 AT&T; breakup consent decree that prohibits the Bell phone companies from transmitting signals across local telephone service boundaries because such transmissions constitute long-distance service.

If successful, Philadelphia-based Bell Atlantic, which provides local phone service in the Eastern Seaboard states, would be allowed to carry cable programming--including such pending services as movies on demand and interactive shopping--throughout the nation.

The nation’s telephone and cable TV companies have been moving aggressively to overturn the many regulations preventing them from entering each other’s businesses on a broad scale. It also underscores the coming battle between the two industries as the technologies of the telephone and television slowly blend.

Bell Atlantic has been the most aggressive of the seven regional Bell phone companies at challenging technological and regulatory hurdles to provide the next generation of communication services to homes and businesses. Later this summer, Bell Atlantic will allow some partners to carry cable TV programming in two states, making it the first telephone firm to offer such a service. It has already filed suit in federal court in Virginia to overturn portions of a federal law prohibiting regional Bell companies from owning cable TV operators.

However, analysts said they don’t expect the Bell Atlantic petition to win much support. They predicted protests from a variety of companies that are sure to view the move as a competitive threat to their current and future businesses.

Among the most likely to raise opposition are cable companies, some of which are already moving ahead with their own plans to expand their offerings to protect their monopoly franchises. Other likely opponents are the six other regional Bell companies, which don’t want Bell Atlantic encroaching on their territory.

Another probable opponent is long-distance phone companies, such as American Telephone & Telegraph and MCI Communications, which are likely to argue that granting Bell Atlantic’s petition would lead to further easing of the restrictions against Bell companies entering the long-distance phone market.

In 1989, Pacific Bell asked the Justice Department for a similar ruling to allow it to start cable TV service in Chicago. That filing is still pending. Earlier this month, Southwestern Bell said it intended to buy Hauser Communications, a New York cable TV company, in a deal that would require another waiver of the consent decree restrictions on long-distance video transmissions.

Later this summer, Bell Atlantic plans to launch four video services, two in New Jersey and two in Virginia. Because those service territories are small, those services would not require a waiver of the consent decree. Bell Atlantic executives say they want to begin serving other areas in order to cover their high costs of beginning the service.